Of course you can use Drive with RealFlow, the question is how complex your Simulation needs to be. If the water doesn't have any effect on the car, you just bake out your Drive Car sim to SD or Alembic and import it to RealFlow for the simulation.
If you need you Car/Drive sim to be influenced by the liquids dynamically, you would need to simulate the whole scene inside RealFlow like Jumamu suggested.

One thing to be noted - DPIT requires your mesh to be a complete volume in order to be an obstacle - any slight imperfections in the car model (a small hole) and it won't be recognized as an obstacle. By comparison, Realflow works with polygonal meshes of any kind. High res meshes (such as a CAD model for the car) will slow down DPIT a bit more than Realflow.

DPIT is significantly cheaper, but Realflow will handle heavier obstacle meshes much easier.

Originally Posted by LukeLetellier:One thing to be noted - DPIT requires your mesh to be a complete volume in order to be an obstacle - any slight imperfections in the car model (a small hole) and it won't be recognized as an obstacle. By comparison, Realflow works with polygonal meshes of any kind. High res meshes (such as a CAD model for the car) will slow down DPIT a bit more than Realflow.

DPIT is significantly cheaper, but Realflow will handle heavier obstacle meshes much easier.

Either way it's probably a better idea to use a low resolution proxy object as the collider.

Originally Posted by uglykids:Which can low down the final quality and detail of the interaction/simulation significantly.

When talking about a car it's probably just a smooth surface so there should not be much visual quality loss.
Especially in a splashy scenario the viewer will not see any difference at all (we just did a car through water scene). Also research in this area shows that the audience's eye is very forgiving.

Anyway, the flip solver of Realflow is just the same. Luke was talking of the SPH solver and in that case, Effex solver is magnitudes faster so you don't loose anything...rather the contrary, you win in simulation time and stability easily (same goes for the according solver in Realflow btw).

Originally Posted by uglykids:Of course you can use Drive with RealFlow, the question is how complex your Simulation needs to be. If the water doesn't have any effect on the car, you just bake out your Drive Car sim to SD or Alembic and import it to RealFlow for the simulation.
If you need you Car/Drive sim to be influenced by the liquids dynamically, you would need to simulate the whole scene inside RealFlow like Jumamu suggested.

When I will bake it out, export to SD. you will get an error message.
"Application Error Causes by plugin 'D :/ Program Files / MAXON / CINEMA 4D DR13_/plugins/RealFlow/realflow.cdl64"!

More information can be found under
`C :/ Users/charlie31/AppData/Roaming/MAXON/CINEMA 4D R13_8A442682/_bugreports/_BugReport.txt`!

Originally Posted by charlie31:When I will bake it out, export to SD. you will get an error message.
"Application Error Causes by plugin 'D :/ Program Files / MAXON / CINEMA 4D DR13_/plugins/RealFlow/realflow.cdl64"!

More information can be found under
`C :/ Users/charlie31/AppData/Roaming/MAXON/CINEMA 4D R13_8A442682/_bugreports/_BugReport.txt`!

Originally Posted by Katachi:When talking about a car it's probably just a smooth surface so there should not be much visual quality loss.

Thats to be discussed. Having raindrops running down a cars door with specific designs, or a whole car falling into a pond, creating eddies and such where smaller parts disturb the water etc will only look as convincing as the model is detailed.

Originally Posted by Katachi:Especially in a splashy scenario the viewer will not see any difference at all (we just did a car through water scene). Also research in this area shows that the audience's eye is very forgiving.

As we don't know what the OP is/was aiming for, its hard to decide which quality is needed, or with what workarounds&proxies you can get away with.

Originally Posted by Katachi:Anyway, the flip solver of Realflow is just the same. Luke was talking of the SPH solver and in that case, Effex solver is magnitudes faster so you don't loose anything...rather the contrary, you win in simulation time and stability easily (same goes for the according solver in Realflow btw).

So Effex has a SPH solver that is much faster than RealFlow's SPH solver? I didn't know that

The hy2 solver in RealFlow 2013 works fine with singlesided geometries, as well as taking these into account as RBD, which to my knowledge isn't the case in Effex, right?

So basically comparing RealFlow to Effex sounds rather akward to me, as RealFlow is so much more complex and offers extensive abilities. (Dynamics)

Btw, X-Particles has a basic SPH Solver as well, but is much cheaper than Effex or RealFlow, if software costs play any role here.

Back to charlie31, his question was if he can use the Drive plugin together with RealFlow, and the answer is a simple yes. If he must use Effex? The answer is no. So any pros and cons on different approaches aren't necessary until the OP decides to specify what kind of effect he wants to create.

Charlie31, your crash could derive from several issues, changing polygon counts, Scaling issues etc.. As you seem to have access to RealFlow, you might as well want to try the new Alembic option for exchanging your 3D Scene between Cinema 4D and RealFlow 2013.

Originally Posted by uglykids:Thats to be discussed. Having raindrops running down a cars door with specific designs, or a whole car falling into a pond, creating eddies and such where smaller parts disturb the water etc will only look as convincing as the model is detailed.

As we don't know what the OP is/was aiming for, its hard to decide which quality is needed, or with what workarounds&proxies you can get away with.

Well, having rain drops would result in a close-up shot. In that case it would be no problem to use the detailed model as it would be easy to make a volume out of the close parts (it's just a simple extrude).

But as he wants to use the drive plugin, he obviously wants a whole car to drive through water. That's what the drive plugin does, making cars drive on a physical base, so that was my premise.

Quote:So Effex has a SPH solver that is much faster than RealFlow's SPH solver? I didn't know that

The hy2 solver in RealFlow 2013 works fine with singlesided geometries, as well as taking these into account as RBD, which to my knowledge isn't the case in Effex, right?

Nope, Effex has a flip solver (that's why I wrote Realflows flip one has the same conditions).

Quote:So basically comparing RealFlow to Effex sounds rather akward to me, as RealFlow is so much more complex and offers extensive abilities. (Dynamics)

Have you used Effex or where does your argument inherit from? Yes, it has parts that Effex does not have (RigidBody Dynamics, SPH) but that's about it (but Cinema 4D provides Dynamics which can be used in conjunction with Effex). But well, Realflow costs 3x times more...and that's just the simulation license.

I know Effex by heart and I used Realflow. And Fluid-wise there is nothing you can't do in Effex that can be done in Realflow (except for the RBD of course) or what exactly do you mean by "more complex"? There are even things you can do in Effex that you can't in Realflow, such as real physical based fluid sheets, support of X-Particles (now that you've mentioned it), direct NET render support and of course all the interaction with Xpress etc.. There is a whole bunch of arguments for Effex.

Anyway, I don't see your point. The original author wanted to know his options. Not sure why you, again, are trying to make an app war out of it but I will not contribute to it.
Effex would be the the most straight forward option here. Is it a must? No, it's just an option as everything else. He could as well use Realflow (it surely can do it), he could use X-Particles, he could use Thinking Particles, he could use standard particles, he could even use MoGraph or he could do it manually. He could even not do it at all and go out with his friends and drink a beer. But it's for the original thread starter to decide what option he wants to use. I am only providing information.

If you want to argue about which app is better or not, feel free to contact me personally or open up another thread on your own and I am glad to enter the discussion. Otherwise I would like to stay on-topic.

Well you started the "war" by claiming RF would be a hassle compared to Effex, and thats simply put nonsense. Can you have a Car body floating dynamically on fluids generated by Effex? I mean Effex putting a floating force on the geometry?

So you compared RealFlows SPH solver to Effex Flip, claiming its "magnitudes" faster, and then adding that RealFlow has the same option?

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